


Slow Revolutions

by Amythe3lder



Series: Irregular Pieces [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: F/M, First Love, Gen, Teen Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-08 01:27:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 566
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4285431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Amythe3lder/pseuds/Amythe3lder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><strong>Prompt: Teenlock</strong><br/>He was both too young and too old for this peer group, but he figured that it must even out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Slow Revolutions

**Author's Note:**

> And these fingertips will never run through your skin  
> And those bright blue eyes can only meet mine across a room  
> Filled with people that are less important than you  
> "Love Love Love"-Of Monsters And Men

If anything, proofreading that essay had only made things more difficult for Mycroft. It was his second term, and he had only the most tenuous of holds on his self-imposed maturity. But for the first time in his young life, he was meeting people his own age who he didn’t find immediately tiresome.

Except they weren’t his age. He had celebrated his sixteenth birthday in a cubicle at the library on campus last October. (He’d had a phone call from home where his mother and dad tried to create enough noise that he almost didn’t notice the lack of his little brother’s voice on the line, and he'd received a cake from the older one on his way back off with his growing posse of mates.) Although he dutifully directed a razor across his chin, he doubted it would make a difference if he skipped it. And there was still so much needless and nauseating chatter from his fellow classmates that he shook his head to think that this was Oxford, and weren’t they meant to behave like adults here? He was both too young and too old for this peer group, but he figured that it must even out.

The only person he had met who wasn’t at least mildly frustrating was in a philosophy course with him (and if he was honest, they hadn’t actually been introduced). To this point, their interactions had been building upon one another’s arguments in class through the medium of instructor-led discussion, wherein they were both addressing their statements to the professor. To Mycroft, who had rarely interacted with anyone outside of his family who could hope to keep up with him, this all seemed daringly flirtatious. He could tell that he was alone in that view.

He took a chance and spoke to her one day, stopping by her desk to trade names, hold out his hand to shake (it was too soon to offer it in marriage, he knew that much), and ask to borrow a pencil. She smiled at him and the midmorning sunlight teased gold out of her ginger hair, and he was gone.

(Mycroft treated that pencil like porcelain until the class was released. He could hardly read his own notes from that day, so lightly had he pressed.)

Two weeks later, she requested that he look over her essay on the changing views of the universe from geocentrism through Copernicus and Brahe to modern understanding. He found little fault with it, which was remarkable in itself. He could have left comments in the margins regarding his position just over her event horizon and about the twinkling rotation of the stars in his eyes. But he remembered her smile: polite and indulgent of his youth and just a little fearful of his mind, and he knew better than to take a step in that direction. It was the sort of look he was becoming mournfully familiar with.

Years later, at one of his first formal functions, he would see her on the arm of a man he knew to be less than her mental match, and they would share that same smile across the room. He would wonder, perhaps, what gravity two such different individuals might have in common to hold them together and happy as they appeared to be. It would be still another decade before he had an inkling of an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read _Happiness Shared_ , this is about the girl Mycroft mentions in Chapter 1.


End file.
